Category Archives: Announcements

With school starting I’ve been spending a lot of time in my classroom getting it ready so I haven’t had a lot of time to post here since returning from my trip down south. I did pick up a box of 2016 Stadium Club which was a blast to open. I’ll gladly post a review of it if you would like.

I had 3 boxes waiting for me when I got home:

2000 Ovation

2000 Showcase

1997 Metal Universe

I’m going to review them in that order and will have a review up by Friday evening. I hope everyone is doing well and you’ve added to your collections as I have. Things will slow down collecting wise for a bit but I’ll keep the readers updated if any major additions come along. Thank you for checking in 🙂

Hey everyone, John here! I had to update everyone on a long outstanding project of mine that has FINALLY been put to rest! Back in September 2007, I decided to do something I thought was crazy and attempted to collect all 120 1998 Flair Showcase Row 0 cards. Seeing how there are only 250 possible sets to be completed and many individual cards are likely sitting in collectors’ personal collections, I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy task. For several years, I had been stuck needing just three cards to complete my set: #3 (Frank Thomas), #9 (Mark McGwire), and #16 (Livan Hernandez). I had come close to winning a couple of these cards in the past but to no avail. To be honest, I had pretty much given up on the set until my OSB co-author Matthew reminded me about it, asking if I had ever completed the set on this old mailday post. Shortly thereafter, I started scouring eBay once again and was fortunate enough to find a seller who had ALL THREE cards I needed. Needless to say, I did whatever it took to make sure those cards landed here! To show you how difficult this was, here’s the breakdown of this set’s print run:

All the years of searching through various online hobby forums, eBay, Sportlots, and others I can’t even think of right now has paid off! The entire set has been scanned to my Photobucket account and can be found here. But let me just post a teaser pic for you guys here. I know there’s at least one card on this page that you would love to have Matthew. 🙂

Any of you that open boxes, know that there is risk involved when it comes to this hobby. Today box 3 of Ionix came in the mail at the price of $45. I’m going to keep this short and simple…it was by far the WORST box of this product I’ve ever opened. No parallels, no major inserts, and out of the 3 inserts I received were duplicates from the last box! Yeah I feel like I just wasted $$ but that’s the risk you take. Safe to say that unless a box of this pops up for super cheap, that this will be the last box of Ionix I purchase 🙂 I am eyeing a box of 2000 EX or 2000 Showcase next. I’m going to lick my wounds and post and update as to how many base sets of the 60 base cards I have from 3 boxes.

(My face while opening the last few packs…I knew I received a beatdown)

While it ended on a sour note, it was sure exciting to find a Warp Zone in box #2. Stay tuned for an “Old School Hits” post that comes from E-X2001. I was lucky enough to find something extremely rare that a member on Freedom Card Board was selling. Pretty excited to write about the card here by the end of the week.

I’ll be reviewing one of these each night for 3 nights. Before I decide which one to review first, are there any suggestions? Ionix is my favorite all time set from 99 so I’m thrilled to be opening a box. The original price on the box is $134!!

Before we all get back to the grind tomorrow, I wanted to give some of you reader’s a preview of what’s coming within the next couple of weeks! First off, hopefully you’ve had the chance to read through John’s 1996 SPX Baseball Box Break. It was one of the better boxes you’ll see of the product and may even get you looking for singles or a box online.

I opened this Blog’s second box of 2000 SPX Baseball, and it was a dandy! let’s just say a future Hall of Fame Auto was waiting in pack #6 of 18 that made me happy. Stay tuned for that review tomorrow before game 5 of The Finals.

On the way is a box of 1998 Donruss Baseball. As some of you may know, 1998 Donruss products may contain a rare Crusade insert, which are highly sought after by the 90’s collecting community. I’ve never opened a product by Donruss before so this one should be fun. Let’s just hope there’s an A-Rod base card in there 😉

Also on the way are 2 Becketts. I thought it would be fun to look back at a Beckett from 2001 and see how much some of these Old School cards were worth when they were a tad more popular before Jersey cards and Autographs became the staple of card collecting.

Lastly, a seller in Canada was selling a large amount of Old School boxes and I was able to score 3 boxes at a cheaper price than any store online (1999 Ionix, 1999 Thunder, and 1999 Bowman Chrome Series 2).

So plenty coming up soon as well as a couple “Old School Hits” posts from my newly arrived Alex Rodriguez collection from comc.com. I hope everyone has a great week and as always, please let other collectors know about this blog that John has worked hard on. There’s ton of box breaks to look through and enjoy among other interesting posts!